The Siren

by McPoodle

Chapter 49

Ponyville, the basement of the Golden Oaks Library.

9:08—NONE OF THAT!

Sorry, Discord.

Some indefinable moment in space and time.

Discord tried tapping on Sonata’s petrified medallion.

It didn’t work.

“Oh no,” Discord told her. “You don’t get out of a reunion that easily.” He tapped insistently on the medallion with a claw, and the statue turned to flesh.

Sonata fell comfortably down into a sitting posture on the box her statue had been placed on. “Hello, Discord,” she said with a disappointed smirk. “Long time, no see.” She looked over at the hopper window allowing light into the basement. “What’s that sound?”

“That’s the sound of this town’s ponies—and the next town over—being tortured by Me. But not as much as they would be if you hadn’t meddled! How did you even cast that spell from inside a statue?”

Sonata smiled mysteriously.

“I’m going to let that slide, for now,” Discord told her irritably. “But only because I’m running out of time. I want to know what you know about the current Element Bearers.”

“Celestia and Luna?” asked Sonata.

“No, not them. There’s six Bearers now. And…you don’t know a thing, despite being semi-conscious for months. Alright, tell Me about Celestia and Luna’s weaknesses. They’re still ruling the ponies, so I might be able to use them as leverage to stop the Bearers.

“They think they can get away from Me that easily!” he started monologuing. “But I know exactly where they’re hiding! I thought I might be able to lure them out by torturing their subjects, but apparently, they’ve gotten cold-hearted.”

“Or they know exactly what You’d do to them if they showed themselves,” remarked Sonata.

“Ah! You do know them,” Discord said with a sinister smile.

“I’ll never talk!” Sonata declared.

“I don’t need you to,” Discord replied. He reached a semi-incorporeal hoof into Sonata’s head, and pulled out a bunch of fortune cookies, which he proceeded to eat, fortunes and all. “Luna had a breakdown? I can definitely use that.”

“Don’t you touch her! She only just came back!” Sonata protested.

“I have all that I need from you,” Discord said, floating up so He could physically dominate her. “And your attitude still disgusts Me.” He tapped the gem of her necklace, causing the color to fade. “So first of all, I turned your jewelry off for a year, so you won’t be able to get out of My punishment for you.” He thought for a bit. “What to do, what to do… I think you need to get away. Somewhere where you don’t get in the way…or push your friend back into the Nightmare’s hooves before I can…”

Sonata gave Him one last look of despair, before she vanished in the wake of a long-distance teleport spell.

“Good luck finding her, Luna,” Discord muttered to himself, before snapping himself into the town square.

“The Bearers live here,” he observed. “Maybe I can accomplish something by discording their friends and relatives.”

---

In a previous life, Sweetie Drops was one of the most intimidating ponies alive. She had wrestled dragons ten times her size to the ground, all by herself. She could overpower any group of ponies trying to stop her from carrying out one of her missions, up to about a dozen ponies. And she had once made Celestia cry “uncle” in a one-on-one, no holds barred match witnessed by the whole of S.M.I.L.E.

Even while being driven insane by Discord, she still had access to those devastating fighting moves. And still she couldn’t lay a hoof on Lyra.

“You’re good, I’ll certainly give you that,” a slightly winded Lyra said as she finished hog-tying Sweetie Drops. “But you’re nothing compared to good old-fashioned Venusian Aikido.”

She stepped back, and looked at the struggling earth pony, with her blood-red eyes. She was also foaming at the mouth.

“Wow,” she remarked. “That spell really did a number on you.” She sat down, just out of reach of the tied-up pony, which only served to make her even more furious. “I’m sorry, Sweetie, but I don’t know a spell to fix this—it’s just too strong for me to break it. I think…” She rubbed her chin with a hoof. “Let’s see what this does.” She casually plucked one of her own ears off like it was an interchangeable part—because in reality it was—and magicked it onto Sweetie’s necklace. The green ear began to glow with magic, which was steadily absorbed by Sweetie. Lyra watched for an effect.

The eyes still remained bloodshot, but with time she calmed down. She looked up at Lyra, and started panting happily, her tongue sticking out.

“Aww…” Lyra said. “You remind me of my Labrador Corkie!”

Sweetie stopped panting, to look right into Lyra’s eyes.

Lyra leaned forward. The expression on Sweetie’s face was that of a dumb animal. But burning at the center of those eyes was the true Sweetie, and she was not amused by the comparison Lyra had just made.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lyra said. “I honestly can’t do any better than that. At least now you won’t have to watch your body attack every pony in sight.” She cautiously reached out a hoof, created a hand out of magic at the end of it, and started petting her.

Sweetie simultaneously loved and loathed this.

Lyra got up, and listened to the continued screams, shouts, and grunts of Ponyville ponies tearing each other apart. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” she said. She opened the basement’s hopper window, which was located above a workbench. “Whine if you need anything,” she said, before going through the basement door.

~ ~ ~

“The Bearers live here. Maybe I can accomplish something by discording their friends and relatives.”

“Hey! Did you do this?”

(Hearing the voice of her Mistress, the dog-ified Sweetie Drops clambered up on the basement work bench and stuck her head out of the hopper window so she could watch.

Sweetie Drops, the fully intelligent pony stuck in the back of this Sweetie Drops’ head, watched in horror. She knew who Discord was, and what He was capable of.)

Discord whirled around. “Who dares…?” He asked. He found Himself face to face with a little green unicorn. “You’re not a pony…” He walked right up to the interloper and used His reality-altering powers to rip a pony cosplay suit off of Lyra, revealing her Tin form underneath.

“oh no you don’t,” Lyra said, the suit flying out of Discord’s claw and back around her body, making her a pony again.

“That’s Equestrian unicorn magic!” Discord observed. “That’s reserved for the rotten ponies who stole it from Me, not the likes of you!” He reached out a claw towards her, which expanded in violation of the laws of perspective to grab her, and then she shrunk as the claw was pulled back, leaving her a hoof-sized captive.

“Princess Celestia is fine with me using it,” Lyra said as she was being shrunk. “That’s good enough for me. And does this mark the start of the interrogation?”

“Yes,” Discord said sinisterly. “What are you anyway?”

“I’m a tourist,” Lyra replied with a smirk. “I’m here to boost the local economy, and be the individual everypony blames for their missing jobs. Is the interrogation over now?”

“Hey, I’m the one asking the questions!”

Lyra gave Discord a look of profound disappointment. “Check,” she said. “And now I know where the ponies get that one from.”

Discord angrily shook Lyra a few times until her head audibly rattled. (Discord supplied the sound effect.) “What. Are. You?” He demanded.

“Alien,” Lyra said curtly. “Extra-dimensional alien. And who are you?”

“I am Discord—this world’s god!”

Lyra nodded politely. “Oh. I hope you don’t expect me to be impressed.”

“I’m a god!” Discord exclaimed. “How could you possibly fail to be impressed?”

Lyra managed to shrug despite being held tightly by the talons of Discord’s claw. “You’re not the first god to ‘interrogate’ me,” she admitted. “What kind of tricks can you do?”

Discord noticed the lack of capitalization in the pronoun she used to address Him. “You want a trick? How about this?”

He then began growing at a rapid pace. The hoof and claw He was standing on passed through the various buildings they would have otherwise demolished. He stopped when His neck had passed through the stratosphere. “How’s that?”

Lyra experimentally took a breath and was somewhat surprised that the air pressure hadn’t changed. (The entire E-Verse containing Equus was in fact filled with breathable air.) “I’ve seen better,” she said. She pointed at a particular object hanging above them. “Can you reach the Moon? I’d be impressed if you could reach the Moon.”

Discord tried. He really tried. But at the end of the day, He was the god of Equus, not of the E-Verse as a whole, so He couldn’t reach high enough. With a pout He returned to His normal size. “I’m getting tired of you,” He growled.

Now Lyra, when Discord had been shrinking down, had spotted Twilight Sparkle, Spike, and the rest of the Bearers hiding behind a building, all wearing their Elements. (Applejack was lying prone on the ground, but despite that fact her Element was lit up and ready to go.) Only something was wrong—Pinkie was shaking her necklace and rapping it lightly on the side of the building. So apparently, they needed more time.

“A god who is tired of Crouton is tired of life!” she proclaimed, repeating a line she had used the last time a god had “interrogated” her.

“Who?”

“Me. Keep up now.”

“Ugh. I am getting tired of all this defiance! You will bow down before Me!”

“Ah, the biggest ‘check’ of all!” Lyra proclaimed with a broad smile. “Discord, you hereby win my Cliched Loser of the Year Award! Redeemable at your local Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Enough!” Discord screamed in her face, enlarging her to her normal size, with an enlarged fist around her mid-section. “Bow down! Acknowledge My godhood!”

“Nope. Don’t wanna!” Lyra said, sticking her tongue out.

With an enraged scream, Discord grabbed Lyra’s head with one claw, and her legs with the other hoof, and started pulling. As a result of His powers, she started stretching like taffy. Taffy with fully functioning pain receptors.

Lyra only grunted. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

Discord snarled. He began twisting her, inflicting even more pain.

“Is…that…the…best…you’ve…got?” Lyra said between gritted teeth.

---

"I can’t look!” Fluttershy whispered.

None of the Bearers were able to look away from the torture they were witnessing.

“Pinkie!” hissed Twilight. “What’s the hold-up?”

“I don’t know!” Pinkie replied, tears in her eyes. “Maybe because nothing seems very funny right now.”

Rainbow looked quietly at Pinkie, taking an internal inventory: Pinkie is the laugh. And Pinkamena is the darkness that makes the laughter hit so much harder. And Rozetri…she was there with us in the Castle of the Two Sisters as well. Is she the unknowable universe, the thing we have to laugh at to remain sane? “I can fix this,” she said in a low voice, picking up Pinkie. “We have to get something.”

And with that she shot off towards Canterlot.

She ended up finding Rozetri sitting in the same closet that she had earlier found Pinkie in after her breakdown.

---

Next Discord started whipping the elongated Lyra around His head, using centrifugal force to try and tear her in half.

“She sails…through the air…with the gr…greatest of ease! …That daring young mare…in the flying trapeze!” Lyra managed to sing.

With a scream of rage, Discord began pounding her head back and forth on every hard object he could see in the square.

He held aloft her broken form. “Any…last…words?” He hissed, steam escaping from His ears.

Lyra opened one bleary eye. “…” she tried to say.

“What was that?”

“Made you look.” And then she lapsed into blessed unconsciousness.

And that’s when He was blasted by the Elements of Harmony and turned back into stone.

Discord’s spell ended instantly. The dozens of Ponyville ponies who had been spending the entire confrontation attacking one another released each other from their various death- and chokeholds and looked around them in utter bafflement.

Twilight immediately teleported out of sight.

A few seconds later Sweetie Drops raced out of her shop, grabbing up the remains of Lyra and sobbing uncontrollably. She managed to get there faster than the Bearers, who had been heading in that direction as soon as they were sure that Discord was no longer a threat.

With a flash, Twilight, Celestia and Luna appeared among them. “Thank you,” Celestia said with tears in her eyes, “for doing what we could not. It was awful knowing that we were forced to abandon our ponies to Discord’s depravity, but we knew you could handle it.”

An angry Siren Twilight used her magic to turn both Princesses around and pointed silently with one hoof at the mess in the middle of the square.

Both of them were horrified by a level of violence they had never encountered before in their lives.

“What…?” Luna began.

“It’s your ‘distraction’,” Siren Twilight spat out, as her pony half watched on in a mixture of horror (“How can you yell at Princess Celestia like that?!”), agreement (“Well, alright, Princess Celestia screwed up”), and horror at said agreement (“Princess Celestia screwed up?!”).

Upon recognizing the mess as once being a pony, both of them began sending healing magic into it. Twilight leant her magic to them, to be soon followed by every other unicorn in earshot.

For several minutes, nothing seemed to be happening. “Is this even supposed to work?” Amethyst Star dared to ask. “Even an alicorn’s healing power has its limits on a pony.”

Sweetie Drops was reminded that this wasn’t really a pony cradled in her arms. Also, that she had said not-a-pony’s ear hanging around her neck. Quietly, she removed the necklace, separated out the ear, and, keeping it hidden behind her hoof, re-attached it in approximately the right location.

There was a bright flash of green light…

And a fully intact Lyra appeared, standing on all four hooves. “I need a vacation from my vacation…” she muttered, then fell over.

Sweetie quickly checked her—she was merely exhausted instead of dying. “She’s going to be OK!” she announced.

The collected ponies cheered. And then most of them decided to go home, in hopes that they might soon wake from this awful nightmare.

“First, the Gala,” Applejack said grimly. As had happened after the last time they used the Elements, Applejack and her friends had been restored to full health.

“Sweetie Belle!” Rarity exclaimed as she remembered.

As Princess Luna prepared to teleport them over, Applejack feared what state she might find her sister in.

Author's Note:

The notes for this chapter can be found with Chapter 53.